Shark Week...really!

I want big sharks! When I was little, the encyclopedias (remember those?) said Great Whites got to be 40 ft long. Now they say Megaladon was that long. I wouldn't stay out of the ocean because of them, but I'm not going looking for them, or chumming either. We need all the great predators. Something needs to eat us! We don't control our own population, and there is already waaayyy too many of us.
 
Several of my Caribbean scuba dives have included sharks.
The docile Nurse Sharks will come to us due to feeding habituation.

Basking or other bottom sharks don't move, but will flee when approached.

Carribean Reef Sharks are more excinting. 13 feet of looming fish, make that a dozen thirteen foot sharks circling.

All of us divers seemed to bunch up like a bait ball.

I like shark week, but don't set my schedule by it.
 
I'm getting a kick out of Travel Channel, I think, having "Shark Fest" the same week. They say, Yeah we said fest not week. So it's not our idea, so what, the sharks don't know what channel they're on.
 
Swim in a critter's food bowl, and wonder why folks get bit?
Think how bad it would be if they were all really going after people.

Exactly. This is a point that's been made for years and years, and not just referring to sharks.

When we venture into the wild, say Montana. I have a photographer friend who lives around Seely Lake. I have a photo he sent me of a grizzly bear on a little hill right behind his house. I say behind "his house", but that begs the question...whose house is it, really?

Our western and upper western states are home to some of the largest, most dangerous predators on earth. There's a few east of the Mississippi, too. When we go there, we're in their house. Ditto for our shoreline. We aren't "humans" to these animals. They don't see us as intelligent, thinking animals. We're just another type of prey. A food source. An item on their menu.

I respect and love all wildlife, large and small. And I know what the dangerous ones can do. Without our guns, we don't even come close to being capable of warding off an attack by a top predator. It isn't a Walt Disney movie out there.

Think about it. There are beings out there who would love to do the same thing to you that you're going to do to that steak or those ribs over the 4th of July weekend. They just wouldn't waste time seasoning and cooking you.

What was this thread about, I've forgotten. Oh, yeah, sharks. Here's a clue...it really isn't safe to go back in the water.
 
I'm thinking of getting a few thousand t-shirts printed up with "I Survived 2015, the Summer of the Shark" and a map of North Carolina. ;)

Tell you what...you do that and take a bunch of 'em up around Ocracoke and Hatteras, or down around Carolina Beach and Ocean Isle, I guarantee you they'd sell. Those Northerners (colloquially known as Yankees :D) who come down for vacation will buy anything.

(That's a joke, folks. Some of my best friends are Yank...I mean people from up North.)
 
Thirty years or so ago my ex-wife and I went to Nags Head for a few days. We stopped at a fishing pier down there somewhere or the other and they had a mounted shark in the tackle shop. I had to back across the shop to get in all in the camera frame. The fellow in the shop told me it was a Mako, and it weighed just under 700 lbs. Big fish to a freshwater bass fisherman.

I asked where it was caught. He said "Right off the end of the pier here. The chamber of commerce doesn't like us shark fishing during the tourist season. They don't want the tourists to know what's just outside the breakers."

I could understand that. The real question to me is, why would people think they weren't there?
 
When I was a kid on the Eastern Shore of Maryland we would go to Ocean City for a week while my father worked down there. He was usually a Chesapeake Bay waterman. and he knew an ol fellow down there. He would go out in the bay behind OC and he made his living catchin sharks. They would get trapped at low tide while grocery shopping in shallow water. He harpooned 'em and shot 'em..some were almost as long as his boat. I got to go out with him every now and then. Being a young'un I was probably just in the waybut oh my he caught some big'uns. Think he sold 'em for cat food or something. The city fathers banned him from the fish docks...or so he said. I was with him when he killed an 11 foot Tiger. That was a really big critter. I also saw a huge Tiger cruising in a small trough down at Hatteras one time. No more than 25 ft off the shore. Out past him the water level rose to knee deep and all the swimmers never saw the darn thing. Guess they figured they were safe. Only shark that ever scared me was an 8 or 9 foot Bull shark I think. I was pulling eel pots out of the Delaware bay surf and had one rub up against me twice. I didn't know what it was at first. I realized pretty quick the 2nd time. Left 3 eel pots in the water..Father told to go get 'em and I refused. When he finally went out to get 'em..he left one. Only time he ever apologized for whuppin my butt. He was a WWII navy guy...and knew about sharks. Now I got a question..What in heck is Shark Week?? Stories about shark attacks?? I assume it is on TV..I only watch Jeopardy
 
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